Marsilea

Marsilea is a genus of approximately 65 species of aquatic ferns of the family Marsileaceae. The name honours Italian naturalist Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (1656–1730).

Marsilea

Forest & Kim Starr · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
water cloverPBDB
Sits inside
MarsileaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Streptophyta

Time the record covers

At least 163 million years on record.

The record covers at least 174.7 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 201.4 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Late Triassic — about 0 of 18 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 2 of 18 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 0 of 18 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 0 of 18 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 1 of 18 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 3 of 18 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 18 occurrencesEocene — about 2 of 18 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 1 of 18 occurrencesMiocene — about 9 of 18 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 18 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 18 occurrences205–199 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences199–192 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences192–185 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences185–178 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences178–171 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences124–117 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences117–110 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences110–103 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences103–97 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences97–90 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences90–83 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences83–76 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences76–69 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences69–63 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences63–56 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences56–49 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences49–42 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences42–35 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences35–29 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences29–22 Mya — about 1 occurrence22–15 Mya — about 2 occurrences15–8.2 Mya — about 6 occurrences8.2–1.4 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences174.7 Mya11.63 Mya205 Mya1 Mya

18 occurrences of Marsilea on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

18 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

7 formations

Horseshoe Canyon — 51.47°N, 112.77°WHorseshoe Canyon — 51.46°N, 112.67°WKaralda Suite — 54.40°N, 87.00°ELower Osinniki Suite — 54.40°N, 87.00°EDakota — 38.52°N, 98.78°WDuaringa — 23.72°S, 149.67°EDeccan Intertrappean — 22.01°N, 79.19°EBhuj — 23.32°N, 69.77°E

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The named rock units Marsilea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Marsilea and its relatives

Miocene

Where Marsilea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

413 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Marsilea, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

10 references

Each of the 18 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Marsilea

Credit
Forest & Kim Starr
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC0 Public Domain
Commercial use
the licence allows it

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itMarsileaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753